Toll the Hounds Part 75

'So,' Karsa murmured, 'these are the Hounds of Shadow. You would play games with me, then? Try for me, and when we're done few of you will leave this place, and none will be free of wounds, this I promise you. Havok, see the black one in the high gra.s.ses? Thinks to hide from us.' He grunted a laugh. 'The others will feint, but that black one will lead the true charge. My sword shall tap her her nose first.' nose first.'

The two white beasts parted, one trotting a dozen or so paces along the ridge, the other turning round and doing the same in the opposite direction. In the gap now between them, shadows swirled like a dust-devil.

Karsa could feel a surge of battle l.u.s.t within him, his skin p.r.i.c.kling beneath the fixed attention of seven savage beasts, yet he held his gaze on that smudge of gloom, where two figures were now visible. Men, one bare-headed and the other hooded and leaning crooked over a k.n.o.bby cane.

The Hounds to either side maintained their distance, close enough for a swift charge but not so close as to drive Havok into a rage. Karsa reined in six paces from the strangers and eyed them speculatively.

The bare-headed one was plainly featured, pale as if unfamiliar with sunlight, his dark hair straight and loose, almost ragged. His eyes s.h.i.+fted colour in the sunlight, blue to grey, to green and perhaps even brown, a cascade of indecision that matched his expression as he in turn studied the Toblakai.

The first gesture came from the hooded one with the hidden face, a lifting of the cane in a half-hearted waver. 'Nice horse,' he said.

'Easier to ride than a dog,' Karsa replied.

A snort from the dark-haired man.

'This one,' said the hooded man, 'resists sorcery, Cotillion. Though his blood is old, I wonder, will all mortals one day be like him? An end to miracles. Nothing but dull, ba.n.a.l existence, nothing but mundane absence of wonder.' The cane jabbed. 'A world of bureaucrats. Mealy-minded, sour-faced and miserable as a reunion of clerks. In such a world, Cotillion, not even the G.o.ds will visit. Except in pilgrimage to depression.'

'Quaintly philosophical of you, Shadowthrone,' replied the one named Cotillion. 'But is this one really the right audience? I can almost smell the bear grease from here.'

'That's Lock,' said Shadowthrone. 'He was rolling in something a while ago.'

Karsa leaned forward on the strange saddle that Samar Dev had had fitted for Havok back in Letheras. 'If I am a clerk, then one prophecy will prove true.'

'Oh, and which one would that be?' Cotillion asked, seemingly amused that Karsa was capable of speech.

'The tyranny of the number counters will be a b.l.o.o.d.y one.'

Shadowthrone wheezed laughter, then coughed into the silence of the others and said, 'Hmmm.'

Cotillion's eyes had narrowed. 'In Darujhistan, a temple awaits you, Toblakai. A crown and a throne for the taking.'

Karsa scowled. 'Not more of that s.h.i.+t. I told the Crippled G.o.d I wasn't interested. I'm still not. My destiny belongs to me and none other.'

'Oh,' said Shadowthrone, cane wavering about once again, like a headless snake, 'we're not encouraging you to take it. Far from it. You on that throne would be . . . distressing. But he will drive you, Toblakai, the way hunters drive a man-eating lion. Straight into the spike-filled pit.'

'A smart lion knows when to turn,' Karsa said. 'Watch as the hunters scatter.'

'It is because we understand you, Toblakai, that we do not set the Hounds upon you. You bear your destiny like a standard, a grisly one, true, but then, its only distinction is in being obvious. Did you know that we too left civilization behind? The scribblers were closing in on all sides, you see. The clerks with their purple tongues and darting eyes, their shuffling feet and sloped shoulders, their bloodless lists. Oh, measure it all out! Acceptable levels of misery and suffering!' The cane swung down, thumped hard on the ground. 'Acceptable? 'Acceptable? Who the f.u.c.k says Who the f.u.c.k says any any level is acceptable? What sort of mind thinks that?' level is acceptable? What sort of mind thinks that?'

Karsa grinned. 'Why, a civilized one.'

'Indeed!' Shadowthrone turned to Cotillion. 'And you doubted this one!'

Cotillion grimaced. 'I stand corrected, Shadowthrone. If the Crippled G.o.d has not yet learned his lesson with this warrior, more lessons are bound to follow. We can leave him to them. And leave this Toblakai, too.'

'Barring one detail,' Shadowthrone said in a rasp. 'Toblakai, heed this warning, if you value that destiny you would seek for yourself. Do not stand in Traveller's path. Ever.' Ever.'

Karsa's grin broadened. 'We are agreed, he and I.'

'You are?'

'I will not stand in his path, and he will not stand in mine.'

Shadowthrone and Cotillion were silent then, considering.

Leaning back, Karsa collected the lone rein. Havok lifted his head, nostrils flaring. 'I killed two Deragoth,' Karsa said.

'We know,' said Cotillion.

'Their arrogance was their soft underbelly. Easy to reach. Easy to plunge in my hands. I killed them because they thought me weak.'

Cotillion's expression grew mocking. 'Speaking of arrogance . . .'

'I was speaking,' said Karsa as he swung Havok round, 'of lessons.' Then he twisted in the saddle. 'You laugh at those coming to the Crippled G.o.d. Perhaps one day I will laugh at those coming to you.'

Cotillion and Shadowthrone, with the Hounds gathering close, watched the Toblakai ride away on his Jhag horse.

A thump of the cane. 'Did you sense the ones in his sword?'

Cotillion nodded.

'They were . . .' Shadowthrone seemed to struggle with the next word, '. . . proud.' proud.'

And again, Cotillion could do little more than nod.

Abruptly, Shadowthrone giggled, the sound making the two new Hounds flinch a detail he seemed not to notice.

'Oh,' he crooned, 'all those poor clerks!'

'Is that a cloud on the horizon?'

At Reccanto Ilk's query, Mappo glanced up and followed the man's squinting gaze. He rose suddenly. 'That's more than a cloud,' he said.

Sweetest Sufferance, sitting nearby, grunted and wheezed herself upright, brus.h.i.+ng sand from her ample behind. 'Master Qu ellll!' she sang.

Mappo watched as the crew started scrabbling, checking the leather straps and fastening rings and clasps dangling from the carriage. The horses s.h.i.+fted about, suddenly restless, eyes rolling and ears flattening. Gruntle came up to stand beside the Trell. 'That's one ugly storm,' he said, 'and it looks to be bearing down right on us.'

'These people baffle me,' Mappo admitted. 'We are about to get obliterated, and they look . . . excited.'

'They are mad, Mappo.' He eyed the Trell for a long moment, then said, 'You must be desperate to have hired this mob.'

'Why is it,' Mappo asked, 'that Master Quell seemed indifferent to unleas.h.i.+ng an undead dragon into this world?'

'Well, hardly indifferent. He said oops! oops! At least, I think that's what I heard, but perhaps that was but my imagination. This Trygalle Guild . . . these carriages, they must be dragging things across realms all the time. Look at yon walking corpse.' At least, I think that's what I heard, but perhaps that was but my imagination. This Trygalle Guild . . . these carriages, they must be dragging things across realms all the time. Look at yon walking corpse.'

They did so, observing in silence as the desiccated figure, holding a collection of cast-off straps and rope, stood speculatively eyeing one of the carriage's spoked wheels.

The wind freshened suddenly, cooler, strangely charged.

One of the horses shrilled and began stamping the sand. After a moment the others caught the same feverish anxiety. The carriage rocked, edged forward. Master Quell was helping Precious Thimble through the door, hastening things at the end with a hard shove to her backside. He then looked round, eyes slightly wild, until he spied Mappo.

'Inside you go, good sir! We're about to leave!'

'Not a moment too soon,' Gruntle said.

Mappo set out for the carriage, then paused and turned to Gruntle. 'Please, be careful.'

'I will, as soon as I figure out what's about to happen. Quell! What warren are we using now? And hadn't you better get the way through opened?'

Quell stared at him. 'Get on the d.a.m.ned carriage!'

'Fine, but tell me-'

'You idiot!' shouted Faint from where she sat on the roof. 'Don't you get it?' And she jabbed a finger at the churning black cloud now almost towering over them. 'That's 'That's our ride!' our ride!'

'But wait how-'

'Climb aboard, you oaf, or drown!'

'Climb aboard,' shrieked Sweetest Sufferance, 'and maybe drown anyway!'

Gruntle saw that the corpse had tied itself to the wheel.

G.o.ds below, what am I doing here?

A roar exploded on the reef and Gruntle whirled round to see the gust front's devastating arrival, a wall of thras.h.i.+ng, spume-crested water, rising, charging, lifting high to devour the entire island.

He lunged for the carriage. As he scrambled up the side and fumbled for the las.h.i.+ng, Reccanto Ilk, squinting, asked, 'Is it here yet?'

The horses began screaming in earnest.

And all at once, the short-sighted idiot had his answer.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

You would call us weak?

Fear talks out of the side of the mouth Each item in your list is an attack That turns its stab upon yourself Displaying the bright terrors That flaw the potential for wonder

You drone out your argument As if stating naught but what is obvious And so it is but not in the way you think The pathos revealed is your paucity Of wisdom disguised as plain speak From your tower of reason

As if muscle alone bespoke strength As if height measures the girth of will As if the begotten snips thorns from the rose As if the hearthfire cannot devour a forest As if courage flows out lost monthly In wasted streams of dead blood

Who is this to utter such doubt?

Priest of a cult false in its division I was there on the day the mob awoke Storming the temple of quailing half-men You stood gape-jawed behind them As your teachings were proved wrong

Shrink back from true anger Flee if you can this burgeoning strength The shape of the rage against your postulated Justifications is my soldier's discipline Sure in execution and singular in purpose Setting your head atop the spike Last Day of the Man Sect Sevelenatha of Genabaris (cited in 'Treatise on Untenable Philosophies among Cults'

Genorthu Stulk)

Many children, early on, acquire a love of places they have never been. Often, such wonder is summarily crushed on the crawl through the sludge of murky, confused adolescence on to the flat, cracked pan of adulthood with its airless vistas ever lurking beyond the horizon. Oh, well, sometimes such gifts of curiosity, delight and adventure do indeed survive the stationary trek, said victims ending up as artists, scholars, inventors and other criminals bent on confounding the commonplace and the plat.i.tudes of peaceful living. But never mind them for now, since, for all their flailing subversions, nothing really ever changes unless in service to convenience.

Bainisk was still, in the sheltered core of his being, a child. Ungainly with growth, yes, awkward in a body with which he had not yet caught up, but he had yet to surrender his love of the unknown. And so it should be wholly understandable that he and young Harllo should have shared a spark of delight and wonder, the kind that wove tight between them so that not even the occasional snarl could truly sever the binding.

In the week following that fateful tear in the trust between them, Harllo had come to believe that he was once more truly alone in the world. Wounds scabbed over and scabs fell away to reveal faint scars that soon faded almost out of existence, and the boy worked on, crawling into fissures, scratching his way along fetid, gritty cracks in the deep rock. Choking at times on bad air, stung by blind centipedes and nipped by translucent spiders. Bruised by s.h.i.+fting stones, his eyes wide in the darkness as he searched out the glitter of ore on canted, close walls.

At week's end, however, Bainisk was with him once more, pa.s.sing him a jug of silty lakewater as he backed out of a fissure and sat down on the warm, dry stone of the tunnel floor, and in this brief shared moment the tear slowly began to heal, re-knitted in the evasiveness of their eyes that would not yet lock on to the reality of their sitting side by side far beneath the world's surface, two beating hearts that echoed naught but each other and this was how young boys made amends. Without words, with spare gestures that, in their rarity, acquired all the necessary significance. When Harllo was done drinking he pa.s.sed back the jug.

'Venaz is on me all the time now,' Bainisk said. 'I tried it, with him again, I mean. But it's not the same. We're both too old for what we had, once. All he ever talks about is stuff that bores me.'

'He just likes hurting people.'

Bainisk nodded. 'I think he wants to take over my job. He argued over every order I gave him.'

'People like him always want to take over,' Harllo said. 'And most times when other people see it they back off and let them. That's what I don't get, Bainisk. It's the scariest thing of all.'

That last admission was uncommon between boys. The notion of being frightened. But theirs was not a normal world, and to pretend that there was nothing to fear was not among the few privileges they entertained. Out here, people didn't need reasons to hurt someone. They didn't need reasons for doing anything.

'Tell me about the city again, Mole.'

'There's a haunted tower. My uncle took me to see it once. He has big hands, so big that when he holds yours it's like your hand disappears and there's nothing in the world could pull you apart. Anyway, there's a ghost in that tower. Named Hinter.'